


the culling of orphaner dualscar by the coward cronus ampora

by badAquatic, orphan_account



Series: Trailerstuck [25]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Implied Relationships, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:30:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badAquatic/pseuds/badAquatic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cronus and Dualscar go for a drive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the culling of orphaner dualscar by the coward cronus ampora

**== >Be the seatroll single mother**

You are Cronus Ampora and you enter your father’s mobile hive, smelling antiseptic and soap that aren’t masking the smell of blood and slow impending death. You’ve butchered enough animals with Dualscar’s urging to easily recognize those scents. 

You find the violetblood in the ablution trap, wheezing for breath. You say in Old Alternian, “You dried up fuck; that’s your blood in the tub and you still won’t fucking die.”

Dualscar doesn’t respond. He’s cold to the touch but still breathing. You set out to your task: you drain the water, wash some of the blood, and wrap your father in a robe. The recuperacoon’s a mess and so is the rest of the mobilehive. Eridan was never much for neatness. If he possessed treasures, he’d leave it all over the house without much care. Dualscar is too used to be doted on to learn any skill that would be deemed ‘beneath him’.

You carry Dualscar to the living room; you’re a strong troll and he’s mostly bone. You sit him in an arm chair and you sit across from him on the dusty couch.

“You’ve done a lot of shitty things throughout your life to me,” you say, “but I am not going to let you do is torment my son with your death.”

“Not…” he gurgles, “…not your son…”

“You took that from me, but he will _always_ be my son.” you insist.

When Orphaner Dualscar smiles, he shows you his broken and cavity filled teeth. They’re stained purple with his blood. “Not yours to take. Not good enough.” He closes his mouth in a thin pleased smile, “Too cowardly…” 

“It doesn’t matter.” you say. “Not even your death matters because soon you’ll be nothing but a memory. You and your forgotten glories that no one on this rock believes. Look at you; the magnificent Orphaner Dualscar.” You stand up. “A pathetic old man who can’t even _walk_.”

That shuts him up for a while. You’re glad.

 

* * *

 

You’ll need to get the boat out of storage and for that you’ll need the keys. You’re still in the process of moving out of Kankri and Terezi’s hive, having found a place downtown with good rent. 

The keys to storage are in the culinaryblock cupboard along with all the others. The culinaryblock smells strongly of burnt pancake. Kankri is washing the pan and plates.

You smile as you get the storage keys. “Made breakfast for Terezi?”

“Yes.” Kankri glances at you, “What are you doing with the storage keys, Cronus?”

“Figure you’ll need Karkat’s old grub toys out of storage for the new one when they hatch.” you say, “It’ll save you plenty of money buying something brand n—”

“ _Cronus_ ,” Kankri sighs, “You don’t have to lie to me.” You stare at the mutantblood. He stares back and you’re the first to break eye contact. “It’s time isn’t it?”

You can’t say anything. All you do is nod.

“…I thought we agreed a long time ago we weren’t doing this?” Kankri growls, “That we weren’t going to give that bastard… the relief…”

“Kankri. _Kankri._ ” The mutantblood is trembling only minutes away from being ‘triggered’ into another fit. You hug him and shooshpap him. “It’s alright, Kankri...”

“I hate him! I loathe that man and _every_ _single thing about him…!_ ”

“I know. I know, Kankri, but there’s nothing I can do about that. What happened in the past was horrible but it was the past. I can’t fix it…”

It takes thirty minutes but Kankri finally calms and retreats to his bedroom. He walks past Terezi with his head hung low and she sniffs the air, smelling his misery you guess.

She sniffs out your presence, “What’s wrong, Cronus?”

You shake your head. “Nothing to worry about. Go lay down.”

You know Terezi has bigger concerns than your past with Kankri. She goes to lay down and you head to the door.

 

With the expanding swamp and constant flooding, most New Jackers in your area don’t bother with basements when public storage is cheaper and more secure. You borrow the hovercar and head to Eisner Avenue, passing the burned out apartment complex. All that’s left is the building skeleton.

The public storage lots are huge, consuming three blocks. Yours is on Lot 3, along Romero Road. It’s a ten by ten room filled with hot stale air. There’s not much in here: Karkat’s old grub toys and tiny recuperacoon, some beach going stuff, a box of old clothes, your cobwebbed guitar (complete with picks and weathered sheet music), and there’s the boat.

Dualscar was a man of the hunt: fishing, shooting, varmints, small game, large game, air or sea—it didn’t matter as long as he could hunt it and make it into a trophy. He’d always drag you along and you hate every minute of it. Not that you were against hunting; you enjoyed the thrill of the outdoors and competitive pursuit. It was being with the Orphaner that transformed an enjoyable experience into a nightmare. Those trips stopped once Eridan hatched. You were no longer Dualscar’s treasured heir. You were just another dead end.

You don’t even know why you put the boat in storage. You should have sold it. You don’t even have the time to fish working two jobs.

You hook the boat up to the tail end of the hovercar. You’ll have to hover close to the ground to keep the boat from dangling down. You decide to get the grub supplies out of storage along with the ancient guitar with accompanying sheet music.

You leave the public storage lots. You stop off back home to drop off the grub supplies on the front step.

 

You find the hunting rifle hidden under the couch in a box. It’s illegal for trolls to own guns in the New Jack, thus the concealment. You’re sure Dualscar has guns hidden all over the mobile hive. You keep it in the box and store it in the backseat of the hovercar.

Dualscar is sleeping in his arm chair. You wrap the old fuck in a blanket and drop him in the boat, covering him with a tarp. You don’t give a shit about his comfort.

You make your point more obvious when you go by Hive Depot, adding several planks of wood, five bags charcoal, and a gallon of ethanol for the old fuck’s company.

You drive to the south, past Becquerel with its temples and past Galina with its abandoned farms. You go to Reynoso, known for its deer-lusus hybrids and hunting grounds. The smell of pine and loud chirping of birds brings backs your memories of kithood. You can pick out the places where you’ve skinned and gutted animals, where you’ve camped, where you’ve sat and admired nature in all its beauty.

You tread old grounds, taking the hovercar deep into the woods. You unload the boat of everything except for Dualscar and the guitar. He’s silent but alive still. You take the boat out to Berezin Lake and ride as far as you can, until land is just a spec.

You put bullets in the rifle. “We can’t reach the sea; this’ll do.”

“Don’t miss, you fuck…” Dualscar wheezes. “Always a lousy shot…”   

“Any last requests before your thinkpan is all over the water, old man?”

“Yes…” Another labored breath, “…a long time ago you wrote… that song...”

You always wrote songs in your spare time, mainly to impress the human ladies. The human ladies at school were all about musicians. For Winter Holiday, you wanted to compose the beginning of a musical you had in mind about the father of Ortiza, the highblood who had to suffer the unjust loss of his child and matesprit to a crooked, speciesist cop. You thought your father would enjoy it and you’d be covering a history credit for school by doing it.

Of course Dualscar found the lyrics while rifling through your respiteblock. He laughed at it, and said your awful writing was the best gift you ever gave him.  

You stare at the Orphaner, trying to read the ridicule that’s about to surface. “Yeah… what of it?”

Dualscar’s face is pale and damp, his eyes sunken in. If he’s mocking you, you can’t tell. He coughs, “D-do it…”

“Do it?”

You glance at the gun but he coughs, “N-no! Just… play the godsdamn…s-song…”

“The song.” You mutter, “After all this fucking time, after every fucking thing you did… you want to hear music. _My_ music.”

Dualscar stares at you, unblinking.

You sigh. “Stupid stubborn old man…”

You only brought the guitar along because you thought about playing it after the task was done. Fate works in stranger ways, you guess. You grab it and sit opposite your father.

The first guitar pluck is rough. You forgot about most keys but playing an instrument is like riding a two-wheeled device; you never really forget. You go for the G minor instead of the D. You wince and try again, picking the D minor. It sounds smoother; more correct. You nod and strum the D minor, getting back into the rhythm.

You’ll never forget those lyrics.

“I was born on Alternia, We came here when I was a child, Before I reached the age of 9 sweeps, I was running with a gang and we were wild...”

D minor again, then back to G. The memory of these lyrics flood back fast.

“He keeps looking but he don’t recognize me, Some troll from New Jack or the Arc, Grub sauce and rice from culinaryblock windows, Supper-time and the hivecluster is dark…”

You remember when you were scribbling lyrics line by line in your notebook. Dualscar called you, demanding to see his second grandchild.  

“No one knows you like I do, Nobody can know your vascular pump the way I do, No one can testify to all that you’ve been through, but I will…”

You visisted the ancient violetblood with Kankri in tow, holding the mutantblood egg. Your father is less than pleased to see the color of the egg.

“I was born on Alternia, And my blood is perse, The briny deep in my soul… We came here wearing summer clothes in winter, Vascular pumps of the light-season in the cold…”

The Orphaner is polite though. He request to have a closer look at the egg. Kankri hesitates, looks at you with worried eyes. Dualscar gives you a piercing look; daring you to challenge his authority.

“Your kin rented this hivecluster, You’d watch the fireflies from your perch, In the sacramental hour your primary ancestor in black, Preached the chaos of the Mirthful Church…”

You can’t challenge him; you wouldn’t dream of it. You persuade Kankri to hand it over. Reluctantly, your ‘matepsrit’ gives him the mutantblood egg.

“No one knows you like I do, Nobody can know your vascular pump the way I do, No one can testify to all that you’ve been through, But this will…”

It’s a blur what happens next. Kankri screaming in alarm, trying to fight the large seatroll. Dualscar snarling, saying you take him for a fool. You try to protect Kankri and you get thrown into a wall. Dualscar says he should have taken this matter into his own hands a long time ago.

“I was born on Alternia, Came here when I was a kit, Small change and sunlight, then I left this hivecluster for good, My days as short as they were wild…”

You stagger to your feet, vision blurring. You hear the ripping of cloth. Kankri is sobbing and trying to escape Dualscar’s grip. You grab the broom in the corner standing in the corner and charge at Dualscar. 

“Your features blurred in every grainy photo, And fading headline of the daily news…”

The impact from his back shatters the broom handle in two. Dualscar seizes your throat and just squeezes. Things go black and you get tossed to the floor. This time you don’t get up. Before you lose consciousness, you hear Kankri beg for the Orpahner not to do this.  

“You cannot even read your story, The pages piling up in shame, Before the words released you, the guards would kill the light, The night you took Mirth and Rage for your name…”

When you wake up, your throat is bruised and you can’t even speak. Your heart is throbbing and the world is raw and bruised. You see Kankri curled up on the sofa, shaking and sobbing like a hurt child. He smells like the Orphaner’s expensive brandy. There’s an empty bottle next to him. Violet genetic fluids drip down his leg in a steady flow.

Your father is putting his clothes back on, as routinely as a man who operates efficient machinery. He tells you to gather your shameless slut and leave because that’s all you’re good for: taking care of garbage.

You leave the presence of your sire sans one egg.

“I was born on Alternia, I was born on Alternia, I was born on Alternia…”

You’re Cronus Ampora and you’re back in the present. You choke on the words, a sudden lump in your throat. You look at the ancient seadweller, who is still staring.

Slowly, Dualscar grins, “…can’t sing…to save your skin boy…”

You don’t say a word. You don’t even humor him anymore. You put down the guitar and pick up the gun again. You turn the old fuck around, facing him toward the lake. Let him pretend it’s the vast deadly ocean of Old Alternia.  

Dualscar heaves a sigh and says something in Old Alternia. You can’t understand it and you don’t care. You press the muzzle against the back of his skull. You don’t shut your eyes as the hammer falls.

 

You go back to shore and prepare the pyre. You put the body on and set it aflame. It takes five hours for it to burn. You gather the ashes in an urn and stare at it.

You don’t cry. You don’t feel relieved or justified.

You feel hollow.

The wind rushes over you, reminding you of how alone you feel in the world right now. 


End file.
